Those universities, most of them publicly funded, rent their sports mascots, logos, and names to nearly 270 radio stations that headline Rush Limbaugh. Those stations receive community goodwill and credibility by the association and use it to attract advertisers.
It is a parasitic relationship with little or no benefit for the university.
Limbaugh is Trump’s loudest and most effective supporter. They’re a team. 25 years of hate, lies, and ignorance from the Republican talk radio monopoly made Trump’s candidacy possible and now Limbaugh is spending hours every day defending and excusing Trump’s intolerance and ignorance and pushing him to go further.
If the polling companies can’t relate Trump’s support to talk radio they’re doing a very bad job.
With few exceptions those stations also broadcast other national haters and liars like Michael Savage, Glen Beck, and Mark Levin, as well as their local imitators. They’re all beating the drums of war now, just as they did when they played a prominent role lying us into Iraq and intimidating Bush critics.
Extremists are beginning to act on the anti-Muslim hate, as they are reacting to the Planned Parenthood lies those stations spread.
Why would any university continue to endorse Limbaugh, who referred to Planned Parenthood as “Planned Butcher-hood”, where babies are ‘chopped up’ into ‘baby parts’?
Why do these universities continue to help the NRA beat back calls for sensible gun control even after 20 children were slaughtered at Sandy Hook/Newtown?
Why would any university lend its good name to radio stations that cover their communities in racism, bigotry, and hate? And most university football and basketball teams are predominantly African American.
Why do these universities undermine their own scholars and scientists and threaten the future of their students and the planet by helping the fossil fuel industry deny global warming? This issue alone makes these relationships inexcusable.
Why do they continue to help elect Republicans who defund education at the state and national levels and fight efforts to reduce student debt?
Why can’t those 90 universities do a better job honoring the goals and principles they express in their mission statements?
It can’t be the money.
In 2013/14, a radio station would pay $1500 to Westwood One/Dial Global for a championship NCAA basketball game. What are they paying for regular games and how much of that actually gets past the athletic department?
Licensing companies (Learfield Sports is a big one) keep those details secret, even from university personnel. The total revenue from radio broadcasting is probably quite low compared to TV. Let’s see some figures. If anyone reading this can find such information please share it.
Loss of audience may be a concern but in most parts of the US apolitical stations could be used to make up the difference. Internet streaming is much more of an option than it was just 5 years ago.
No matter what the endorsement of Limbaugh and RW radio brings in, how can it balance the effect of years of education budget cuts due to Republican policies sold by Republican radio?
Surely donors can be found to make up the difference.
It can’t be the good PR and university ‘branding’.
How can it be good for a university’s image to be associated with the radio stations that incite violence with lies and routinely use and excuse racism, sexism, global warming denial, character assassination (swiftboating), and lying to further Republican goals?
Unfortunately, in the ongoing effort to enable and excuse Trump’s fascism and racism, talk radio racists like Limbaugh are once again even attacking children refugees from Central America.
With the blatant racism and Muslim hate coming from those stations every day, those universities may as well be renting their logos to the KKK to put on their robes. There is no difference.
It can’t be because they care for their students and faculty and employees.
Republican talk radio hosts are always on the wrong side of issues effecting students, faculty, and employees unless you believe religion and free markets will solve all our problems. For 25 years those stations have worked primarily for the corporate think tanks, ALEC, and establishment Republican goals.
They have a huge say locally and nationally on peace and war, environmental issues, wages and worker rights, public education privatization and voucher scams, student debt relief, electronic voting machines and voter suppression legislation, and net neutrality. They regularly attack teachers and professors, intellectualism in general, and science.
Student activists all over the country are being undercut by their own universities. How many student activists and voters can a single radio host reaching tens of thousands, even millions, cancel out?
Choosing to broadcast sports on a Republican talk radio station can’t be excused as an objective, apolitical, market-based choice.
The excuse that these relationships are apolitical is ridiculous in many ways. The local talkers on these stations even weigh in on the elections of university regents and who is and isn’t acceptable to be chosen for university chancellors and presidents.
It is a parasitic relationship that is antithetical to everything our institutions of higher learning supposedly stand for.
Republican radio stations probably average 12-15 hours of local and national talk every day. That’s 12 x 5 days a week x 52 weeks = 3120 hours of pro-Republican programming every year. That’s a low estimate. Even George Noori, who does the Coast to Coast late night show is a climate change denier.
A loud station might charge $20/minute to advertise a product. Lets say $10 a minute x 60 = $600/hour x 3120/year = $1,872,000 a year worth of pro Republican advertising, on the back of your publicly funded university’s mascot and logos.
$2 MIL/year x 268 stations = $536,000,000.
So there’s $½ BIL per year of pro Republican advertising on the backs of those 90 universities. Are Democrats factoring that?
All together for all Republican radio stations that’s more like $2BIL per year — for over 20 years, moving the political center to the right and selling $TRILLIONS$ in war, deregulation, tax cuts for billionaires, corporate welfare, and global warming denial.
And that’s the best kind of political messaging/propaganda there is: in many parts of the US it is a captive audience, advertisers pay for most of it, it’s cheap or free to produce, it doesn’t sound like advertising, and it is repeated and reinforced by all Republican talk radio stations with little or no correction, so it must be true.
Will you benefit if your state universities divest from RW radio?
If you wonder how your state could have gone so far right, elected so many ignorant corporate tools, or passed so much crap the last 20 years, consider how $2MIL per station per year in promotion of Republican candidates and regressive legislation, or countering progressive activism, can effect local politics. From promoting or attacking a school board candidate to blaming wildfires on environmentalists and endangered species for limiting commercial logging.
1200 radio stations averages out to more than 20 stations per state.
Right wing radio stations associated with university sports programs are often among the loudest and most prominent in their respective states. Here are some states in which the political landscape may be particularly improved if those universities were pushed to divest from RW radio.
North and South Carolina- 20 North Carolina 8, North Carolina State 3, Duke 3, East Carolina 2, South Carolina 2, Clemson 2 (I know they’re 2 different states...)
Michigan- 18 Michigan St. 11, Michigan 7
Florida- 16 Florida 10, Florida St. 4, UCF 2
Texas- 15 Texas A&M 9, Texas Tech 4, TCU 1,Texas 1, Baylor 1
Georgia- 14 Georgia 7, Georgia Southern 2, Georgia Tech 5
Pennsylvania- 13 Penn St. 11, Pittsburgh 2
Oregon- 12 Oregon 5, Oregon St. 7
Indiana- 11 Notre Dame 6, Purdue 4, Indiana 1
Ohio- 8 Ohio St. 6, Toledo 1, Bowling Green 1
Illinois- 7 Illinois
Tennessee- 7 Tennessee 4, Memphis 3
Idaho- 7 Boise St. 4, Idaho 3
Virginia- 6 Virginia Tech 5, Virginia 1
New York- 6 Syracuse 6
Missouri- 6 Missouri
Nebraska- 6 Nebraska
Washington- 5 Washington 5, Washington St. 1
Iowa- 5 Iowa 4, Iowa St. 1
Wisconsin- 4 Wisconsin
And it’s not necessarily proportional. A state like Colorado may only have a couple of such parasitic Limbaugh radio stations but the one that the University of Colorado endorses, 850 KOA, dominates the state and can be heard in dozens of other states at night.
KOA was only one of a few radio stations with strong signals available where the recent Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood terrorist lived, in Hartsel, CO.
SUGGESTION FOR ACTION:
Any major progressive issue can be protested at these universities because they are helping Trump and the Republicans. Same with defending Sanders and Clinton from lies and attacks.
Discussion of the issue will be good for any university and may stimulate student voting. Start petitions.
Find out how much the radio portion of the licensing is bringing in and start a fundraising effort to make up the difference and silence the inevitable objections.
Even if the university administration resists, the public discussion will cause more advertisers to abandon Republican radio, expanding on the great work of stoprush, flushrush, and others.
A university may only have to pledge to examine the issue or to redo their next licensing agreement in order to cause advertisers to flee and cause a radio station to try alternative programming.
Other media may be glad to help considering the years of intimidation and insults from Limbaugh and sons.
Even some Republicans may be supportive, considering the degradation of the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Limbaugh.
Here’s the list of shameful universities which continue to help Republicans spread hate and ignorance. This does not include many other schools and colleges that broadcast basketball only, or broadcast on the many other Republican radio stations that do not do Limbaugh, or have unranked, smaller athletic programs.